The production of raw sugar-bearing juices, i.e. sugar, or sucrose, requires, e.g. milling a cane for recovery of a sugar-containing juice. The plant cells of the cane are ruptured by pressure to release the sugar-bearing juice. The "raw juice" is turbid and dirty, greenish in color, and acidic. The nonsucrose solids in the juice consist of reducing sugars, mineral matter, of which potash is the largest constituent; and organic nonsugars, such as nitrogenous bodies, fats, waxes, and pectins or gums. The amounts of the nonsucrose impurities vary with the variety of cane, the growth period, soil conditions, climate and intensity of milling.
Analysis of a raw juice for determination of its sucrose content, e.g. as by use of a polarimeter, or saccharimeter, requires purification, or clarification of the juice. Lead acetate and other lead salts have served as clarifying agents for many, many years. Addition of these reagents to the juice, or solution of the juice, neutralizes the organic acids that are present. Salts, together with coagulated albumin and some fats, waxes and gums form a feathery precipitate that entraps finely suspended matter and parts of the colloids. Filtration produces a clear juice of about neutral pH which contains the sucrose. The percent sucrose of the solution can be obtained from the polarimeter, or saccharimeter reading, when the cane juice, or related product, is clarified to the point of optical clarity.
Lead subacetate has long been the reagent of choice for sugar cane juice clarification for such analyses, due largely to its simplicity of application. However due to its high toxicity, health and environmental circumstances require that lead residues of this type must now be disposed of in a safe manner. The cost of safely disposing of lead residues however is quite costly for which reason there exists a clear present need for a replacement for this material as an agent for clarifying raw sugar-bearing juices, e.g. raw sugar cane juices, and related products, for chemical analysis.